hthrrloooo

I admit that making this curried chicken salad, which I love and almost always make with leftovers the night after roasting a chicken, stresses me out because it's a kind of non-recipe thing where I just taste as I go until it tastes good. I'm always afraid I'll mess it up!

So tonight I finally (mostly) measured and standardized this recipe's amounts:

dressing:

3 tbsp mayo

1 tbsp sour cream

1 tbsp heavy cream

1 tsp crème fraîche

1/8 tsp garlic powder

1/8 tsp onion powder

1 tsp lemon juice

1 tsp honey

1/2 tsp salt

1/4 tsp ground ginger

1 tsp S & B curry powder

pinch (less than 1/8 tsp) MSG

1/2 tsp quick pickled red onion brine

solids:

1 whole leftover roasted chicken breast, chopped, plus a little more dark meat

1/4 c toasted cashews, chopped

1/4 c balsamic & boiling water-plumped golden raisins, drained

2 peeled stalks celery, finely diced

1 green onion, minced

2 to 3 tbsp quick pickled red onion, minced

Whisk together dressing in a small bowl.

Put solids into big bowl. Fold in half of dressing. Add the rest if it's too dry. Taste for seasoning and add salt, pepper, mayo, red onion pickle brine, lemon juice, etc. if needed.

Mushrooms

Oh room of gills one must possess to live inside this world,  dark rafters in the dome of earth, digesting all that is,  when I taste you I taste my own death, but too  what will come after, what you’ll make of me when I’m  no more, I see the door that opens into everything, the everything I’ll one day be. Oh molder, oh rot, oh knotted network tying together all things, I eat your flesh and make it part of my own, and so I carry us both, knowing someday we’ll return to the loam,  a home beneath the turf. Praise you, filth. Praise to what decomposes, its noble uses, its rightness, its is-ness  and not-yet-ness, the business of conversion, of dispersion,  the end, the beginning, and the being in the midst.

My full sense of smell and taste still haven't returned since I was sick in March-April. I tested multiple times and was negative for covid every time. So I don't know whether other viruses can affect you like it does, or if what I had was a variant of covid that evaded testing for some reason. Either way, it worries me because I was something of a supersmeller and supertaster before, and food and smells gave me a lot of joy and delight. Now the senses are still there, but just... dulled.

I hadn't messed much with the sewing machine since teaching myself the basics a couple of months ago, so today I got out the machine, loaded the bobbin with jeans-colored thread, threaded the machine, and hemmed a pair of stretchy high-waisted flares in a heavy denim that I had thrifted and were in my to-be-altered pile because they were way too long. I love them so much now. I'm glad I chose a thread in an inconspicuous color, because my seams are definitely not very straight.

Last night we watched A Field in England (2013), which was just as wild and mysterious as Friday night's screening of The Shout (1978), albeit for different reasons. I enjoyed it.

Stumbled across a lot of old photos in my email this week: family, my parents' house, cats who have since passed on. It was bittersweet, seeing them. I found an email I sent my dad over a decade ago, in which I reflected on an Emily Dickinson poem, whether it's good to tell the whole truth, a line from a Galway Kinnell poem, and some other stuff. It was weird to meet this younger version of me, and it was good to read some of my dad's emails to me. They were all addressed to "Woozle" (his nickname for me) and signed, "Love, Papa Daddy." He was a good dad. I found a poem he wrote in which he called himself "the son of an orphan and a prizefighter." That's what prompted my own poem about my grandaddy this week. My dad was the offspring of two messy, fiery people. He was soft-spoken, thoughtful, self-effacing, wise, reticent, patient. I wonder if that was his rebellion.

I start my summer gig on Thursday and I'm dreading it, but not feeling particularly pressed or stressed about it, like I have in years past when I fretted about doing a good job. I'll take their money, but I'm not going to lose sleep over doing an excellent job. It's just a gig. I'll do the basics and take my time working and encourage the readers I'm supervising to do the same. If they want to never invite me back after this year, that's their prerogative.